hms iron duke

Thursday, 28 August 2014

Oslo, Norway. 28
August. That great Norwegian author and
social realist Henrik Ibsen once wrote that, “The strongest man in the world is
he that stands almost alone”. Back here
in Norway’s compact but complete capital Oslo on the edge of ‘Europe’ one gets
a different perspective that is beyond the alternative reality that is today’s
EU. September marks the bicentennial of
the Congress of Vienna which established a balance of power in Europe that was
sustained for almost exactly a century before it collapsed catastrophically in
August 1914. With the balance of power
in Europe again in flux is it not time for a new Congress of Vienna?

As a good Oxford
historian I counsel against the use of too much ‘history’ to explain too much ‘present’. It tends to make for bad history and a
depressing present. This would no doubt
have satisfied Metternich the arch-conservative architect of the Congress. He
saw his primary duty as the prevention of a new Napoleon and the need to contain the
revolutionary/nationalist forces that might have de-stabilised the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.

That was then and this
is now. The Congress worked because Europe
in 1815 was open to a Metternich peace and the new balance of power it sought. France lay defeated, Russia exhausted,
Germany did not exist, and the great victor Britain saw its future not as a
continental European power but as a global imperial power. Indeed, with America colonising itself the
Congress marked the start of the second British Empire and unquestioned British
supremacy for over sixty years.

However, the Congress
does strike two far-distant chords. First, there is similarity between today’s
European Union and the balance of power system that Metternich sought to craft. For all the rhetoric about political union
the EU was built on the premise that Europe’s major powers are roughly
equal. With Germany’s rise to pre-eminence
that is no longer the case and the balance of power mechanism implicit to the
EU sees its law-based approach under ever-increasing pressure from one
over-mighty, albeit well-intentioned, subject.

With Russia launching a
new offensive this morning in south-eastern Ukraine (perhaps the Russian forces
in question are all lost) President Putin looks ever more like a Russian Sparta
to the EU/Germany’s Greece. For all the incomprehension
at Russia’s bad behaviour in Ukraine it certainly reflects Moscow’s unease
about the changing balance of power in Europe.

In 1814 then as now Britain,
Russia and Turkey were peripheral powers.
Russia had been a part of the coalition that defeated Napoleon and Moscow
initially saw the Congress as a means to extend power and influence
westward. However, Russia very quickly came
to see itself as separate from European security and saw the failing Ottoman
Empire as an opportunity to extend its writ into the Mediterranean, parts of south-eastern
Europe and the Middle East. Crimea, then
as now, was vital to Russia as a warm water port from which to extend its naval
influence. This ambition led to the
Crimean War in 1853 and the British and French siege of Sevastopol.

Today, Britain, Russia and Turkey are the three "almost alone" powers in Europe. However, unlike in 1814 they stand alone
in relative weakness rather than relative strength. None
of them like the current order, not one of them has a clear idea what to do
about it, all of them could almost stand alone, but Europe would be much the easier if they did not.

In a sense 2014 is the completion
of a full systemic cycle that started in 1814 and includes 1914. The question for Europe remains the same –
what to do with big power both at Europe’s core and its periphery. Little but rich Norway grapples daily this
question but unencumbered by big power, or at least the appearance of it,
Norwegians take a typically pragmatic view.

But here’s the twist.
Were it merely a question of institutional relationships between peripheral
states and the EU a political settlement could surely be made. The problem is that the EU is fast becoming
an alibi/metaphor for German power. Britain
cannot fold itself fully into the Eurozone core of the EU because that would be
to acquiesce to German power. The Russian
strategic mind is deeply uncomfortable with the idea of German power in whatever
form it takes and in spite of endless talk of a special relationship between Moscow
and Berlin. Indeed, Moscow pretends it is
countering EU influence rather than German influence in what is fast becoming
Europe’s most complicated political relationship. Ankara has a special but complicated
relationship with Germany that is exacerbating a deepening inner struggle over
whether it is a European power or Middle Eastern power, a secular or quasi-theocratic state. It is a struggle further exacerbated by a Germany
that pretends to want Turkey in the EU but in fact does not.

Therefore, maybe it is
time to see the current struggle for Eastern Ukraine not as an issue solely
between Russians and Ukrainians but rather the reflection of a shift in European power
and its consequences. If so it is time for
a new Congress of Vienna to reassure Europe’s marginal powers that the EU and
its revolutionary ‘integrationism’ is not some new and unintended form of German-led Bonapartism.

However, ‘Europe’ had
better move quickly. Metternich’s only
true intellectual rival at the Congress of Vienna was the French statesman
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. He might
have been speaking of Europe today when he famously said, “If we go on
explaining we shall cease to understand each other”. Europe's simple and eternal truth is that whatever the language or the setting the Old Continent is only secure when power is in balance. The strongest man in the world is he who stands with others.

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 26
August. Last week German TV programme Monitor on Das Erste ran a piece on NATO. Central to the ten minute report was
my latest NATO Defence College/Wilton Park report “NATO’s Post-2014 Strategic Narrative”. Apparently the aim of my report is to turn Russia
into an enemy as part of a conscious and aggressive NATO plan to take over Eastern
Europe. That’s certainly news to
me.

Like all bad
journalists those responsible for a piece that plastered my name all over
German TV never bothered to consult me.
They simply chose selected, out-of-context snippets to make a
preconceived case and then implied that my independent report was somehow NATO
policy. On the eve of the NATO Wales
Summit that such a respected German TV channel could run such a piece
demonstrates the schism at the heart of European Defence and the need to
re-think it.

The essential idea of
European Defence was and indeed is not so much about the defence of Europe but rather
‘A’ if not ‘THE’ key aspect of European integration and eventual political
union. For the True Believers an
integrated European defence organised on and in the EU would and should in time
emerge if Europe is to be unified. European
defence would then the European pillar of a re-energised NATO in which
legitimacy, affordability, efficiency and efficacy would act as four inter-locked
defence cornerstones.

Successive crises,
endless empty promises, the growing gulf between the European elite and the
people and the rise of strategically-pacifist Germany demonstrate that European
Defence is a pipe-dream. And yet somehow
it hangs on the minds of many in the Brussels elite. The result is a Europe that punches far below
its strategic weight.

As with all things EU the
essential way forward for European Defence was and is indirect. To overcome national sensibilities and the
very different strategic cultures still all too apparent in Europe a step-by-step
‘functionalist approach’ was adopted by its political architects called “Constructive
Ambiguity”. Whatever speed a country
went the assumption by those at the heart of the “European Project” was that sooner
and later EU member-states would end up in the same place - a unified EU-focused
European Defence. The ‘finalité,’ to use
the jargon would be an integrated European Defence. This would look not a
little unlike the failed 1952-1954 European Defence Community, Europe’s first
attempt at an integrated defence.

However, trust or
rather the lack of it has destroyed European Defence. Repeated crisis have demonstrated that Europeans
share neither a sufficiency of strategic ambition nor critically strategic
culture to put all their defence eggs in one big European basket. Worse, Afghanistan had a toxic effect on
European Defence because with their “red cards” and “national caveats” too many
Europeans allowed too many other Europeans to do too much of the dying in what
was meant to have been a collective endeavour.

The current crisis in
Ukraine could well be the final nail in the coffin of European Defence precisely
because it is an exercise not in constructive ambiguity but destructive ambiguity. Only though destructive ambiguity could the
French consider the sale of advanced warships to Russia that the BBC described
this morning as “perfect for invading a small country”. The French, of course, have assurances from Moscow
that they would never be used for such a nasty thing. I wonder if those are the same type of
assurances that Paris got from Berlin in the late 1930s.

Therefore, it is time
to end the nonsense about European Defence.
There will in future be two Europes.
One Europe will continue to seek an American-led defence via NATO. To do that this group will seek to share at
least some of America’s burdens and willing to do real defence or at least a bit
of it. The other group will comprise
those states that seek German-led security.
The latter group will no doubt talk richly about European Defence, the
more so as the EU becomes ever more a metaphor for German power. They will also talk a lot about ‘solidarity’. However, when a crisis emerges they will
either pretend nothing is happening or announce they are too busy gardening or
something to do anything – destructive ambiguity.

The piece on German TV that
attacked my report was really about the schism that exists in European Defence
and the destructive ambiguity that sustains it. At the heart of the piece was a
very strange map. It showed a Europe
with the deep-reassuring blue of NATO across the western half but a strange washed-out
grey-blue spilt over the rest. It was as
though no-one had told the journos in question, Nikolaus Steiner and Andreas Orth
that many of the countries they implied were not really NATO members are in
fact full NATO members with the same rights to collective defence as the rest
of us. In other words for Das Erste defending NATO members is in
fact NATO aggression.

Sadly, destructive
ambiguity will be the hidden theme next week in Wales. You can expect much talk of ‘solidarity’. You will even see the launch of a “Readiness
Action Plan” offering “strategic reassurance” to NATO allies in Eastern Europe
designed to counter Russia’s future use of its own form of destructive
ambiguity - ambiguous warfare.

To paraphrase Bismarck
Europeans are so split that much of the talk in Wales will be not worth the healthy
bones of even one Pomeranian grenadier – much like the Das Erste piece.

Thursday, 21 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. August 21st. Seventy-five years ago at
2330 hours on August 23rd, 1939 one of the most dangerous and
destructive documents ever drawn up between two European states was signed in
Moscow. Named after the respective
Soviet and German Foreign Ministers of the day the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
(better known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact) was an exclusive non-aggression
agreement that carved Eastern Europe into spheres of unwelcome Nazi and Soviet
influence. In effect the Nazi-Soviet
Pact marked the real start of World War Two.
On the one hand, the Pact eased the way for Hitler who no longer faced the
prospect of a “zweifrontenskrieg”. On
the other hand, the Pact finally forced London and Paris to face reality and
give Poland security guarantees that actually meant something. World War Two broke out just over a week later on September 3rd. As an exercise in cynicism the Pact remains
unsurpassed. At its heart was a notorious Secret Protocol which breached all tenets
of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations concerning secret diplomacy and
strategy. The Protocol stated as
follows:

“On the occasion of the signature
of the Non-Aggression Pact between the German Reich and the Union of
Socialist Soviet Republics the undersigned plenipotentiaries of each of the two
parties discussed in strictly confidential conversations the question of the
boundary of their respective spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. These
conversations led to the following conclusions:

1.In
the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging
to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern
boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence
of Germany and the U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the
Vilna area is recognized by each party.

2.In
the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging
to the Polish state the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall
be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San.

The question of whether the interests of both
parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish state and how
such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course
of further political developments.

In any event both Governments will resolve
this question by means of a friendly agreement.

3. With regard to South-Eastern Europe
attention is called by the Soviet side to its interest in Bessarabia. The
German side declares; its complete political disinterestedness in these areas.

This protocol shall be treated by both
parties as strictly secret.

Moscow, August 23, 1939.

For the Government of the German Reich:

V. RIBBENTROP

Plenipotentiary of the Government of the
U.S.S.R.:

V. MOLOTOV.

Nazi Germany was
eventually cast into the dustbin of history but only as a result of World War
Two and at the cost of 53 million lives.
Thankfully, modern Germany has nothing to do with such an
obscenity. Indeed, the very ethos and
existence of the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union in which it
plays such a leading and enlightened role reflects modern Germany’s utter
rejection of those few ghastly sentences above.

Russia is also a
modern and civilised country and is not the Soviet Union of old and yet of late
it has been behaving as though it was. In
2014 not only is the Russian War Plan for Eastern Ukraine clear for all to see
it is already being enacted. There has also
been a whole raft of secret agreements between Moscow and pro-Russian
separatists in Ukraine including the infiltration of significant numbers of
Russian personnel and equipment.

One such
agreement led to the stationing of the Russian SA-11 surface-to-air missile on
Ukrainian soil which shot down Malaysian Flight MH-17 on July 17 resulting in
the murder of almost 300 innocent people. Former senior US official and Russian expert Strobe Talbot rightly
says that Russia’s invasion of Eastern Ukraine is already under way. The aim; a new Russian protectorate in
Ukraine called the Union of Donetsk and Luhansk Republics established on self-proclaimed
borders.

The toll is
mounting. As of 15 August 2119 people
had been killed in Eastern Ukraine with some 5100 people wounded. At present some 60 people are being killed or
wounded daily with some 156,000 people displaced. 190,000 people have fled to Russia with just
over 22,000 people having fled Donetsk and Luhansk last week alone in what is
in effect street-to-street fighting.

The planned
meeting next week between President Poroshenko and President Putin could make
the difference between open war and peace.
Therefore, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the signing of this
criminal document President Putin has a chance to demonstrate to fellow
Europeans that he fully understands this is 2014 not 1939. And, that Russia believes in and is bound by
the rule of international law in a Europe the borders of which are also established
by law not force.

If an agreement
can be reached in Moscow between the presidents it must respect Ukraine’s sovereignty,
open a new dialogue on the future of Ukraine-Crimea, and establish proper
rights for all minorities within Ukraine.
Then Europe as a whole can return to the twenty-first century and Russia
return to the family of European nations to which it rightfully belongs.

However, for
such an accord to be reached other Europeans need to show political backbone –
no shady deals. Seventy-five years ago
the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was in part a consequence of Britain’s appeasement
of Nazi Germany. In 2014 Berlin and
other European capitals must be careful that they too do not mistake self-interested,
short-term appeasement for ‘strategy’.

Indeed, for all
Russia’s undoubted historical ties with Ukraine there is a fundamental issue at
stake in this struggle; the right of free and independent states to choose
their allegiances and alliances freely unhindered by unwelcome spheres of influence.

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands.
20 August. Is Britain the new
Afghanistan? What has become of my country?
James Foley, an American photo-journalist is beheaded by a sneering Jihadi
who speaks with a British accent. As per
usual the apologists appear on British TV and radio to talk about the need for ‘understanding’
and ‘tolerance’. And, indeed, it is
vital at this moment that the millions of moderate British Muslims are not tarred
with the broad brush of hatred these people wield. It is precisely division and mistrust such
people seek to sow in British society. And yet there is clearly a problem. When I look back to my salad days the very
idea of a British Jihadi would have been unthinkable. Indeed, even today it is hard for the bulk of
the indigenous population to equate such killers with being British. Instead, most of we Britons sit in sullen,
silent anger at how our traditional tolerance has been corrupted and look-on in
tired aghast at the utter incompetence
and inability of politically-correct elites to get to grips with what is
fast becoming a dangerous Britain.

Instead of dealing with such issues by properly controlling who
can enter and live in Britain and then seeking to build an integrated society
government after government has retreated into failure-masking spin and
pretence. The entire population knows
that successive British governments has lost all but nominal control over
Britain’s borders and yet Londonistan
(as the French continue to call London) continues to trot out the same old
tired mantras that immigration is under control and that multiculturalism works.

It is not just a problem with politicians but the entire
London Metropolitan elite. Last week one
of the great over-washed masquerading as that towering Victorian journalist
Walter Bagehot wrote a piece in The Economist entitled “The Trials of life in Tilbury”. It was one of the most arrogant and
out-of-touch articles I have ever read about the poor, white working class of
Tilbury. These are people who in little
more than one generation have had their country taken away from them, their
old-fashioned values of tolerance, mutual respect and patriotism trampled on by
a sneering and incompetent elite, and the Britain they once-loved and for which
many fought and died torn apart.

And yet, according to ‘Bagehot’, who reduced the whole complex
issue to one of stupid, white people they are the ‘left-behinds’ who do not ‘get’
globalisation, the ill-will of whom is generated by “autochthonuous meaness”. Now, I have four degrees and a reasonable
facility with the English language and yet I had to look up ‘autochthonuous’. For the on-this-particular-planet people out there
‘autochthonuous’ means ‘indigenous’. In
other words the white population of Tilbury are intrinsically and by
implication genetically ‘mean’ for being concerned about the impact of hyper-immigration
on their town, their country and their lives.

In fact, it is the natural tolerance of the English that
politicians have too often exploited and then used against decent, ordinary people to
silence dissent. Indeed, as politicians
have repeatedly failed to get to grips with the dangerous society Britain is
fast becoming politicians have too often tried to use law and intimidation to
silence anyone who speaks out about what is now self-evidently a clear and
present danger.

Too often the political class have simply tried to wish-away the consequences
of their irresponsibility. Do not get me
wrong – I am of course not accusing all nor indeed the massive majority of
immigrants of seeking to de-stabilise British, or should I say more
particularly English society. Respect
and tolerance goes to the very heart of my DNA.
Equally, no longer can London go on trying to pretend that some
aspects of the hyper-immigration of the past twenty or thirty years have not
spawned what is now a very real and dangerous problem. Apart from
a very few pathetic people it is not the indigenous population that is being
radicalised.

Britain cannot go back and there is nothing to be gained from
nostalgia. British society today is what
it is and that must be the starting point.
However, the issues raised by ‘British’ Jihadis are fundamental. As the 2015 General Election approaches the
High Priests of Multiculturalism are already re-appearing and they must for
once be resisted. Indeed, for too long
been multiculturalism, i.e. the deliberate fostering of parallel, separate lives of different 'communities' on a
small island has been Britain's problem not its solution. It is multiculturalism that has created the dangerous
space that has allowed the extremes of separate-ness to lead to the kind of brutal extremism evident in the slaughter of James Foley.

Therefore, no more the kid gloves of political correctness which is destroying British society. Government needs to fundamentally re-think how it helps
to construct a re-integrated society in which all of its members irrespective of
race, religion or orientation believe they have a stake. If London fails social cohesion will progressively
fail, the making of foreign and security policy will become impossible and national
life itself will be at risk.

“Policy” means properly re-integrating Muslims and indeed all
other minorities properly into British society.
By all means be a hyphenated-Briton but to be ‘British’ and have the right
to share the benefits of British society must mean to be a part of that society
and to share its core values. The good news
is that there are a whole host of hyphenated-Britons out there who can help
lead the way towards the most important of social attitudes - respect.

Re-integration will take a long time but it must start
now. And for once Government must not dodge the issue in the face of the
inevitable barrage that will come from self-interested, self-appointed, single-interest
groups. This is because the threat posed
by ‘British’ Jihadis to British society and indeed the United Kingdom is far
greater than a few Scottish fantasists in skirts. No more pretence, no more appeasement and no
more dangerously self-deluding political correctness.

Sadly, the British people as a whole must be under no
illusions; even though they despise “British values” these extremists were bred
in Britain, their toxic views were allowed to fester in Britain, and sooner
rather than later they will seek to return to Britain to cause mayhem. Politicians caused the mess that is British
society today and it is politicians that must help fix it. If not then Britain will indeed become the new
Afghanistan – a threat to itself and to others.

Tuesday, 19 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 19
August. Today is World Humanitarian Day.
The event commemorates the 19 August 2003 bombing of the UN Headquarters
in Baghdad. Among the dead was the UN’s
top envoy Sergio Viera de Mello with whom I had spent a day in Geneva shortly
before he left for Iraq. Last week UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon published a report on the Responsibility to
Protect (R2P) entitled “Fulfilling our Collective Responsibility: International
Assistance and the Responsibility to Protect”.
With American and British forces active again in Iraq on the face of it
R2P and humanitarianism are alive and well. Nothing could be
further from the truth.

Firstly, humanitarianism was essentially a European idea in which Europeans did not invest. In April 1999 then
British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a famous speech in Chicago which laid
the groundwork for humanitarianism and the
merging of values with interests – the Doctrine of the Value-Interest. Blair said, “No longer is our existence as states
under threat. Now our actions are guided by a more subtle blend of mutual self-interest
and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish. In the end values and
interests merge. If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule
of law, human rights and an open society then that is in our national interests
too. The spread of our values makes us safer. As John Kennedy put it “Freedom
is indivisible and when one man is enslaved who is free?” That was then and this is now.

Today, the
idea of humanitarianism looks like yesterday’s idea, precisely because it is so
closely associated with Tony Blair and his ilk – yesterday’s man, yesterday’s
idea. Indeed, in the soon-to-be wake of
Afghanistan humanitarianism looks to austerity-mired Europeans like a recipe for the endless engagement
of small, ill-equipped and under-funded military forces in dangerous, difficult and costly places in pursuit of ill-defined goals made more unclear by empty political rhetoric.

Secondly, without the support of
the US humanitarianism became just yet more empty European political prose. Indeed, the failures in both Afghanistan and
Iraq and NATO’s retreat from certainty were caused in no small part by the
confusion of values with interests by America and its European allies which made planning virtually
impossible. The specific US aim to
engage in Afghanistan was to deny Al Qaeda the use of an ungoverned space from
which to launch attacks such as 911.
However, in a desperate bid to build a broad coalition the aim morphed
into turning Afghanistan into a functioning democracy built on the European
principle that when European forces must leave a place far better off than the day
they arrived.

Thirdly, 1999 was also the high-water mark of Western power. On 12 June 1999
Milosevic began his withdrawal from Kosovo and the tragic Wars of the Yugoslav
succession came to an end in which over 140,000 people had been slaughtered and 4 million
displaced. It
seemed for a moment that the Doctrine of the Value-Interest would know no
bounds. Indeed, emboldened by a
successful 2000 military intervention in Sierra Leone Tony Blair became the
High Priest of Humanitarianism.

And yet
over the horizon first China and then Russia were re-emerging as powers with a
much narrower concept of the national interest.
In 2013 the West’s inability to intervene in Syria’s tragedy was partly a
function of this power-shift and the new geopolitical fault-lines which it imposed and which now so
constrain the West’s room for manoeuvre, even within its own borders.

Fourthly, humanitarianism and the Value-Interest were also inextricably linked with the then concept of European defence. Back in June
1998 I wrote a piece for the “New
Statesman”, a Labour Party-leaning magazine called “Time to Bite the
Eurobullet”. The piece called on Britain
to help lead the creation of a meaningful autonomous European defence project
and laid out the framework for what became the 1998 St Malo Declaration with
France and eventually the EU’s 1999 Helsinki Declaration.

Scroll on fifteen years and European defence is effectively
dead. Torn asunder by the 2003 Iraq War,
the 2008 financial crisis and the ‘national caveats’ and ‘red cards’ which
meant too few nations did too much of the dying in Afghanistan. Today, European ‘defence’ is split between the
declining Anglosphere and the ‘do nothing’ Eurosphere. Sadly, once again it is the Americans and British
taking action in Iraq whilst ‘can’t do, won’t do’ European allies sit and
twiddle their fingers. Indeed, I am growing old listening
to the same old EU nonsense that the much-vaunted Common Security and Defence
Policy and which enshrines the very principles of humanitarianism is still
young. To paraphrase Monty Python’s “Dead
Parrot” sketch; CSDP is dead, an ex-policy that has ceased to be.

However, there is one other reason humanitarianism is in
retreat – the loss of public support. At
the weekend Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC that, “…alongside the humanitarian crisis, there is
also a political and extremism crisis in Iraq that has a direct effect on us
back here in the UK”. Each and every time Britain has engaged on a humanitarian mission
it has led to thousands of refugees seeking refuge in Britain. Yesterday, Canon Andrew White the somewhat implausibly Anglican Vicar of Baghdad called on Britain to take an initial 20-30,000 ‘Christian’ refugees from Iraq. The same day 35 Afghan Sikhs were
rescued from a container at Tilbury docks seeking refuge not in India but Britain. English society in particular has been progressively destabilised by the arrival of significant numbers of
traumatised people from traumatised societies in traumatised regions often with
views and beliefs markedly different from the “British values” Prime Minister
Cameron claims to champion. Indeed, the tragic irony of humanitarianism is that not a few of
the Islamic State extremists America and Britain are seeking to defeat are so-called
hyphen-Britons drawn from communities that settled in Britain as a function
of humanitarianism.

Britain and the wider West must not abandon the principles of
humanitarianism for it is those principles that defines the civilised West and
help to make the world a better place. At
the same time, uncomfortable though it may be particularly for those on the political
Left, societies such as Britain must be careful not to risk the very social
cohesion that still just about defines them simply to uphold humanitarianism. Western states like Britain need to escape quickly from the woolly no-end, dead-end no-man's land that humanitarianism has become. They must also establish a much clearer
idea of their interests if they are to preserve their values.

Indeed, until balance is restored between values and
interests humanitarianism will continue to retreat and any sense of
international community with it. For
all that I pay genuine tribute to the brave aid workers who have given their
lives for the sake of humanitarianism, the better world in which they clearly believed and for whom World Humanitarian Day was rightly created.

Friday, 15 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 15
August. T.E. Lawrence wrote, “In fifty words: granted mobility, security (in
the form of denying targets to the enemy, time and doctrine (the idea to
convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents,
for the algebraic factors in the end are decisive, and against then perfection
of means and spirit struggle quite in vain”.

Western leaders should
heed Lawrence’s words but not in the way they may think. Seared by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq,
paralysed by the situation in both Syria and Ukraine the West has retreated
into politics at the expense of considered strategy. Indeed, having understood that the threats
they face from across the great belt of insecurity require a big, long-term
strategy it is as though having batted badly in the first inning they have
decided to leave the field to the opponent.

Indeed, uncertain what
to do political leaders across the West have retreated into a series of military/humanitarian
sound-bites ignoring some catastrophes, focusing on others on the grounds that they
can at least do something. In Britain
these days it is not the government that runs British foreign and security policy,
but BBC Television News.

And yet what is
happening to Europe’s east and in the Middle East is forced change by opponents
with potentially catastrophic consequences for the West. Indeed, far from being the exception to the
twenty-first century rule such conflict is fast becoming one of its defining
features.

British strategist
Basil Liddell Hart wrote in the 1930s that, “InStrategy the longest way around is often the shortest way
there. A direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the
resistance by compression, where as an indirect approach loosens the defender's
hold by upsetting his balance”.
The Russians in their crafting of a ‘new’ doctrine of ambiguous warfare
are in fact simply applying Liddell Hart’s dictum. The way for the Western leaders to out-manoeuvre
Russian ambitions in Eastern Ukraine is also (in fact) relatively simple. They must up the Russian ante by offering a
better future for ALL Ukrainians if they remain Ukrainian. Make the costs of ambiguity too high for
President Putin and he will seek a face-saving solution to extricate himself
from bad strategy.

The
Middle East is of course more complex, as indeed it always is. My assertion some time ago that the entire Sykes-Picot
state structure is at risk has now become fact.
Indeed, what the Islamists of Islamic State/ISIS have successfully
achieved is to create a sense that they are unstoppable. They have been allowed to get away with this partly
because politically-correct Western leaders worried about offending minorities
somehow accept that the Western action over the past decade was implicitly
a form of colonialism/ imperialism. They
selected the aim and then abandoned it and now want to keep the threat at
strategic distance by either appeasing it, ignoring it or both.

And yet
what is happening in the Middle East is acutely important. Faced with such circumstances ‘strategy’ should mean a collective
ability to see the very big picture of this very big picture conflict. However, contemporary Western
strategically-illiterate political leaders seem unable to do that. At the very least Western leaders should and must
challenge the two assumptions upon which this grand insurgency is
established. Firstly, that the majority
of people in the Middle East actually want a Caliphate and the return to
medievalism that it entails. Secondly,
that in this struggle between the state and the anti-state the state is somehow
a doomed anachronism.

Of
course, direct engagement of the Islamists by booted and suited Western troops
would give Islamic State/ISIS exactly what they want. It would be presented as a form of anti-imperialist
legitimacy of the kind (not without irony) that Lawrence turned against the
Turks during World War One - hence the need for the indirect approach.

The
problem with Western leaders is that because they routinely put 'no significant military
action too close to an election' politics before strategy they have lost the
will, the patience and the statecraft to deal with complexity. And yet if the West is to re-generate
twenty-first century grand strategy - the pursuit of large ends via large means
– it is precisely statecraft and a new approach to dealing with complexity that
they need. Indeed, complexity is the
very stuff of international relations.

Therefore,
the West must generate its own form of ambiguous warfare by turning the
insurgency against itself. This means in
the first instance properly supporting groups such as the Kurds who can help
stop the advance of Islamic State/ISIS. Over
the medium to long term diplomacy, aid, development and above all consistency
will be central to any such strategy with a particular aim of renovating the
idea of the legitimate state in the Middle East and helping to ease the many
grievances the Islamists exploit. And,
from time to time direct military expeditionary intervention will also be
needed and Europeans in particular must pay heed to the need for such military
capabilities.

The
indirect approach works because as a strategy it implies not just that the ends
are political but also the ways and means.
Specifically, that means Americans and Europeans together engaging to find
a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict AND actively helping to
remove the forces that can only benefit from conflict, such as the Assad regime
in Damascus. At times such a strategy
will mean uncomfortable bed-fellows such as Iran; at times it will mean
offending this group or that at home. Above
all, ‘strategy’ will mean a truly joined-up, whole of government approach to
strategy that is so lamentably lacking from the celebrity politics of the age
led by political vision and reinforced by political back-bone.

However,
unless the West together helps the people of the region generate a better future in the Middle East no-one
else will and given the ensuing vacuum spill-over to Europe and beyond could be
catastrophic. In that light the dropping
of aid to ease the plight of the Yazidi people (important though it is) is not
a function of a Middle Eastern strategy but rather a mask for the retreat from
it.

The
strategy-vacuum at the top of Western governments was put best in an email
yesterday from a very senior American friend of mine. “Obama
has no-one to do any serious thinking and doesn't seem to know he doesn't have
it. It is the great "unknown unknown." And the Europeans are not in
the game, not even the Brits, whose government is all talk and no walk”.

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 12
August. Wales - the land of Celtic
myths, legends and fantasies. W.B. Yeats once wrote, “Take, if you must, this
little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round…” Indulge me. Pretend for a moment that the NATO Wales
Summit in September really mattered.
Pretend for a moment that NATO's political leaders had the vision
and the will to really understand the strategic potency of that Welsh ‘moment’. And, pretend for a moment that for once NATO
leaders were prepared to put strategy before politics and prepare NATO for the
future rather than the all-too-comforting but dangerously illusory
past. What would my Welsh Fantasy NATO
look like?

Fantasy NATO would face
the world as it is, not as our leaders would like it to be and take its rightful place at
the hard core of a world-wide web of secure democracies. A strategic force multiplier Fantasy NATO would
forge new relationships between members and partners as the West ceases to be a
place but is re-born as the winningest idea of the twenty-first century in an
age of dangerous hyper-competition.

Fantasy NATO would
reflect today’s realities, not yesterday’s with a strategically-serious Europe easing
the pressure on failing, flailing America; the world’s only indispensable power
hopelessly indispensably present in all the world’s fractious regions. In Fantasy NATO flexibility and agility would
be the mantra of power. Sometimes
coalitions of willing and able members would lead; sometimes coalitions of willing members and even more able partners would lead; and sometimes a Fantasy NATO-supported Fantasy EU would lead.
All would be bound together by NATO Standards for the effective doing of effective
things effectively.

Fantasy NATO and Fantasy
EU would be unjealous of each other in my Welsh fantasy; united in practical partnership. Fantasy EU would be organised and integrated
around Germany and the Eurozone and at last able to manage crises beyond itself
not simply within itself. Britain, the
great brake on European integration and Continental Europe’s increasingly desperate
search for a twenty-first century balance between sovereignty, strategy, and affordability
would be cut free. Cut free to take its
rightful place alongside America, Canada, Australia and others that share its
strategic culture and that are prepared to properly share risk and burdens at the
point of contact with danger.

In NATO security might
be indivisible, but the sharing of burdens is clearly not. Fantasy NATO would finally face reality and have two new pillars; the New Atlantic pillar and the New European pillar. Nations would be free to move
and indeed choose between the two pillars for they would represent the
two very different strategic cultures now enshrined at the heart of the
Alliance. Fantasy NATO would also have two very different levels of
membership built on the principle of more pay more say. The New Atlantic pillar would be for the full-on full
members, whilst the European pillar for the half-membered and half-hearted. Whilst the Atlantic Pillar would be a small,
exclusive club containing all the ‘two-percenters’, the latter would be a kind
of strategic rest home for those who have decided to park themselves on the
margins of history – the ‘one percenters’.

Partnership as much as
membership would be the dynamic ethos of Fantasy NATO with new relationships
forged between stability partners, strategic partners and members. To that end, Fantasy NATO would find a natural
place in a family of reinvigorated international institutions. Indeed, Fantasy NATO could act as a brokerage
for the effective sub-contracting of legitimate forceful action and the mutual
reinforcing of institutions vital to the prevention of extreme state behaviour
and states of extremism the world over.

Above all, Fantasy NATO
would be a big, global military picture NATO; an Alliance of the strategic mind
that would reach across the globe. It
would have a clear, core mission to act as the true world standard for the legitimate
generator of democratic force and its effective command, control and
interoperability.

Fantasy NATO would be organised
around three strategic commands; Allied Command Operations, Allied Command
Transformation (finally free to transform); and Allied Command Knowledge. All three would be open to Member and Partner
alike. Critically, in Fantasy NATO ‘Transformation’
would act as the transition between knowledge, understanding, influence, deterrence and effect with ‘ACT’ at last equipped to properly scan global horizons freed from the mixed
metaphorical shackles of dangerous one-lensed and rose-tinted glasses.

Knowledge would be aggressive;
gained as much by doing as thinking. At
last exercises would test the unknown, the uncertain and the necessary rather
than the known, the comfortable and the irrelevant. With outcomes assessed, lessons-learnt and wisdom
shared across this free association of free nations via the rigours of science.

At Fantasy NATO’s
all-important hard military core a true Welsh monster would emerge Phoenix-like
at the behest of visionary leaders; a twenty-first century Article 5 collective defence Welsh
dragon ready to defend today and tomorrow not yesterday. Missile defence, cyber defence and advanced
deployable force would be hard-merged by knowledge into a fast-flying,
fire-breathing, sharp-eyed, sharp-clawed but discerning beast. “This is the Land of My Fathers” it would snarl. “So, don’t even think about it”.

September in Wales should see light break where no Welsh sun shines as Dylan Thomas would have it. So, will NATO fly in Wales? Will leaders finally put strategy before
politics? No, for that would be a pure
fantasy and for most of them my Fantasy NATO would be far too much reality.

Thursday, 7 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 7
August. On Monday Russia began a major exercise on its Ukrainian border involving
over one hundred aircraft designed nominally to improve the ability of the
Russian air force to react to events. The
exercise took place as Ukrainian forces advanced on the separatist-held city of
Donetsk. The true purpose of this
exercise is clear; to intimidate Kiev into halting its offensive. On Tuesday Moscow called for an emergency
meeting of the UN Security Council to demand a cease-fire in Ukraine and a “humanitarian
mission” which Russia would lead. Yesterday,
in a sign of what might be to come, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told
Russian troops massing on the Ukraine border to “expect the unexpected”. In other words, Russian action maybe imminent
if Kiev does not agree to a cease-fire that confirms de facto Russian control
over significant parts of Eastern Ukraine.
However, what of the future and what does it say about the twenty-first
century Russian way of war?

“Expect the unexpected”
is as succinct as any a description of hybrid warfare. Put simply, hybrid warfare is the conduct of
military and other operations that involve conventional forces, irregular forces,
intelligence, information warfare and cyber warfare to keep an opponent
off-balance both politically and militarily. Such warfare is backed up by a deep knowledge
of the strengths and weaknesses of an opponent and a willingness and ability to
maintain focus on the political objective by being agile and flexible in the
face of events. New Russian thinking
emerged in the wake of the 2010 Defence Modernization Programme driven in part by
a deep analysis undertaken by Moscow’s Frunze Military Academy of the political
top to military bottom conduct of operations undertaken by US and Allied forces
over the past twenty-five years.

Today, Russian forces
are designed to exploit hybrid warfare.
Indeed, the strong presence of Russian military intelligence (GRU) and
Special Forces in ‘support’ of the separatists has seen an adaptation of
Western ideas of hybrid warfare into a new, more robust ambiguous warfare. Russia’s use of ambiguous warfare is the tailored
use of force nominally in support of proxies with a particular focus on exploiting
the political weaknesses of an opponent.
In this case the ‘weakness’ in question are European politicians in
denial about President Putin’s determination to ensure the Russian-speaking
parts of Ukraine become Russian.

So-called ‘snap
exercises’ have taken place around Russia’s European border in 2014 all of
which have been designed to use Russian military force to exploit and
consolidate instability created by the use of proxies in large Russian-speaking
populations beyond Russia’s borders. This
is by no means the fault of Russian-speaking citizens of other countries but rather
in line with President Putin’s 1 July statement to Russian diplomats at which
he said that Moscow will ‘protect’ those who regard themselves as Russian,
including a new concept of “self-defence” and a specifically Russian
interpretation of international law.

Critically, the elite
Special Forces, Intelligence Forces and the heavier but highly mobile new force
in the Western Military District are under the direct control of President
Putin who keeps them at a very state of readiness to act. They can be used in a range of ways from providing
a base for insurgent operations, acting as a dagger to impose a diplomatic
solution Moscow seeks or as a self-sustaining force that can assault an
objective or simply move in under the guise of humanitarian relief to secure an
objective.

President Putin would
prefer that his political objectives in Eastern Ukraine are achieved with as
little bloodshed as possible much like the operation to seize Crimea. Too much death would exacerbate the consequences
Moscow would face. He also understands
that whilst Ukrainian forces maybe advancing in the rural areas around Donetsk
they would find it hard to prevail in a street-by-street battle. Indeed, such a battle would likely turn the
city into a grotesque parody of Grozny, the shattered capital of Chechnya levelled
by the Russians in the 1990s.

NATO’s Deputy Supreme
Allied Commander Europe General Sir Richard Shirreff, who in many ways
pioneered NATO’s concept of hybrid warfare, has warned against politicians that
“lack muscle memory”, i.e. prefer to avoid the nasty end of politics. President Putin has correctly understood that
one of his greatest strengths is the denial amongst other European leaders
about the scope and nature of his ambitions and his determination to use force
to prevail if needs be.

However, there are signs
of change. Russia and Ukraine will now
dominate the September NATO Wales Summit.
On 2 August British Prime Minister David Cameron wrote to NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen calling for a NATO force that would
counter the new Russian force. This new
force would be modelled on the old ACE Mobile Force and would require of all
the Allies significant new investment in mobile, high end forces held at high
readiness and able to deploy at short notice.
To be effective such a force would need a new high level command
structure reinforced by real knowledge about evolving political situations.

The British could take
the lead by re-instating the Advanced Research and Assessment Group which I
once supported. ARAG was closed down in
2010 because its strategic analysis proved politically inconvenient for ministers
and senior civil servants. It is
precisely the culture now well-established in Europe whereby sound strategy is
sacrificed for short-term politics that President Putin has properly understood
and nimbly exploited.

Monday, 4 August 2014

Alphen, Netherlands. 4
August. How can NATO deter Russia? One
hundred years ago today Britain declared war on Wilhelmine Germany for invading
Belgium and breaching Belgian sovereignty guaranteed under the 1839 Treaty of
London. These past few weeks there has
been a lot of politically-correct nonsense about the causes of World War One
with (as usual) Britain’s BBC at the forefront ably supported by Cambridge
professor Christopher Clark and his 2013 book “The Sleepwalkers”. It was nobody’s fault but everybody’s fault
goes the line.

The strategic causes
were in fact fairly straightforward even if today they are politically unpalatable. The war was caused by the aggressive
nationalism and revisionism of Wilhelmine Germany reinforced by the paranoia of
the Juncker elite about the emerging labour movement in Germany and the social
and political change they were demanding.
It was triggered by an opportunistic but failing Austria-Hungary
emboldened by its alliance with Berlin and then magnified by the bloc system put
in place to ‘balance’ Europe. Scroll one
hundred years on and Wilhelmine Germany sounds a bit like Putin’s Russia.

Naturally, the way the
outbreak of World War One is being covered has nothing to do with history. ‘History’
(as so often) is in fact a metaphor for today and the deep divisions within Europe concerning Russia’s actions in Ukraine and elsewhere.
It would be easy to say (as some leaders are indeed saying) that Europe is
now immune to big war. That is also
utter nonsense. What such leaders are really saying is that for them it is
unthinkable that major war in Europe could happen. Think again.
The proponents of such an argument like to point to Russia’s actions in
Ukraine as somehow a one-off, an enforced adjustment to boundary ‘mistakes’, a
realignment of states with nations. If Ukraine is compensated by Moscow for the
loss of Crimea and gas supplies assured by Russia Europeans can again live
happily ever after. That is to ignore
President Putin’s long retreat into nationalism and revisionism as an illiberal
regime comes under increasing pressure for liberal change.

Like the causes of
World War One the facts of Russian strategy are also strategically-clear but politically unpalatable. Since the $700 billion 2010 Defence Reform
Programme was announced Russia has embarked on a major rearmament effort which
now consumes some 20% of all Russian public expenditure. Russia is also constructing new tactical and
strategic nuclear weapons some of which may be in breach of the keystone 1987
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. In
other words, Russia’s actions are those of a state with a clear if misguided
strategy rather than a state ‘sleepwalking’ into conflict.

The choice for the rest
of Europe is equally clear; deterrence or appeasement? Or, rather what balance to strike between the
two. Last week a high-level report came
out from the European Leadership Network (ELN) written by several former European
foreign and defence ministers. The
report warns against escalating the conflict in Ukraine to create a
twenty-first century ‘doomsday’ scenario whereby systemic war between adversarial
great powers could be inadvertently triggered in Europe as a result of escalation
caused by the actions of smaller third parties.
Recognise it?

Now, hard though it may
seem to the people of Ukraine 2014 is nothing like the powder-keg Wilhelmine
Germany had created at the heart of 1914 Germany. And yet, some of the strategic principles
remain the same. What action to
take? What does escalation actually
mean? Above all, is an accommodation
possible with Moscow and is Moscow in a position to offer compromise given
internal pressures?

Professor Clark would
have it that it was the pre-1914 arms race that created the conditions for
World War One rather than per se the
aggressive politics and militarism of Wilhelmine Germany. That is to ignore the one dynamic strategy that
drove all others. The situation in
Ukraine has been triggered similarly by the aggressive politics and proxy/closet
militarism of Putin’s Russia and Moscow’s correct belief that their fellow Europeans
are now so weak and divided that they can do very little to stop Russia. Even the much-heralded enhanced sanctions
agreed by the EU last week have so many loopholes in them that Russia is already
driving the latest T90S tank through them.

Therefore, in such
circumstances it is vital that European leaders do not confuse legitimate
circumspection with appeasement. Indeed,
de-escalation before escalation looks awfully-like surrender, i.e. the
abandonment of any real determination to demonstrate to Moscow that rapacious
land-grabs that herald a shift in the European balance of power will be
resisted. First European leaders need to
understand and then critically agree why Russia is doing this.

The reasons for Moscow's actions are again strategically
clear but politically unpalatable.
Driven by a deep sense of nationalism allied to manufactured grievance
over EU and NATO enlargement the Kremlin believes that unless it changes the
orientation of states on its borders by extending its sphere of influence
Moscow will be cast to the margins of influence. The method is the use of actual and implied
military intimidation to force Eastern European states to look not just to the
West but again East. Few if any of these
states want to do this beyond being good neighbours of Russia.

Therefore, facing clear
strategic but unpalatable political truths is again the real challenge facing Europe’s
leaders. Are they up to it? Right now
Europe is again dealing with fundamental issues of power and principle, war and
peace even though some leaders would rather not admit it, whilst some are even unable
to recognise it. Rather, they seek
solace in a new kind of appeasement; that somehow Russia can be bought off. This is particularly the case in Berlin which
still carries the yoke of the legacy of both Wilhelmine and Hitlerian Germany even
though neither has much if anything in common with modern Germany.

The problem is that history
in Europe today warps politics and undermines strategy. Appeasement prior to World War Two failed to
prevent war just as much as Professor Clark would claim that pre-World War One
arms races caused war. Today’s Europe is
somehow lost wandering between the two and both strategy and politics reflect
that. However, war is not prevented by
simply refusing to prepare for war.
Tough though that may sound to western European leaders many of my
Russian colleagues would totally understand that.

A March 2014 spat
between Britain’s then former Defence Secretary (now Foreign Secretary) Philip
Hammond and NATO’s then Deputy Supreme Allied Commander (DSACEUR) British
General Sir Richard Shirreff highlighted the dangerous division in Europe between
the strategic class and the political class.
Now, I must declare an interest at this point. I was a contemporary of Hammond’s at
University College, Oxford and although I would not claim to know him (few
would) there is a protocol between Old Members of my Oxford College. Equally, I used to support Richard Shirreff
and he is a friend. So, I will be
ruthless in my analysis.

Hammond threatened
Shirreff with disciplinary action because the latter had suggested that
Russia’s actions in Ukraine were a “paradigm shift” and that NATO was not up to
the task of defending Alliance members against Russia. His statement simply reflected a classified
assessment by NATO of NATO that Hammond found politically inconvenient. Last week the House of Commons Defence Select
Committee in a new report effectively agreed with Shirreff saying that “…events in Ukraine
seem to have taken the UK government by surprise”.

On Saturday Prime
Minister Cameron wrote to all other NATO members urging them to “…make clear to
Russia that neither NATO nor its members will be intimidated” and hinted at
possible increases to the British budget.
He also called for a strengthened NATO Response Force (a real NRF would
help) and a reassessment of relations with Russia.

On the face of it Cameron
is doing what all good leaders should do in light of changed circumstances;
adapting. By contrast Hammond’s tetchy response to
Shirreff in March demonstrated a refusal to adapt precisely because if properly
understood Russia’s action would get in the way of his policy priority –
cutting the British defence budget. To
be fair to Hammond fixing the British economy was London’s strategic priority
when he came to office. Equally, Hammond
had to sort out the notoriously incompetent British defence procurement process
and committed Britain to a £160bn military equipment budget.

However, implicit in Hammond’s
public put-down of Shirreff was a refusal to reconsider strategy in light of changed
events precisely because it might interfere with political dogma. Shirreff told me recently that NATO was
unable at present to fulfil its collective defence mission. Today, there are very real questions as to
whether the Alliance could even fulfil its deterrence mission. Not only have NATO’s conventional military
capabilities become hollowed-out to the point of irrelevance the de facto decoupling
of the US from European defence is now fact.

All of this points to a
loss of strategic judgement for the sake of political expediency. Indeed, over the weekend Sir Richard said to me that
his experience had “…been an interesting case where the duty of strategy-makers
to speak truth unto power conflicts with political expediency!” On the one hand, there will be those
in the Clark school of thinking that will point to the argument of General
Moltke and the 1914 German General Staff who believed that unless they attacked
very quickly the forces ranged against Germany would become stronger possibly irresistible. In other words 1914 was the moment to
act. This is a little like Israel’s argument
for acting against it sworn enemy Hamas in Gaza. With only Qatar left able to offer Hamas
support there is no ‘better’ time for Israel to act than now. On the other hand, for Europeans collectively
to do effectively nothing either to counter Russia’s illegal actions or to
respond to Russia’s arms build-up would look dangerously like appeasement, especially
to those driving policy in the Kremlin.

So, what to do? For once Britain does matter precisely
because Britain is a European power (even if my country might soon fall apart). At the September NATO
Summit in Wales Prime Minister Cameron must demonstrate that he is playing strategy
not politics. He must back the words of
his letter of this weekend with action and lead by example. In addition to the committing of 1300 British
troops to more robust and realistic NATO exercises, Cameron must also commit Britain to the 2% GDP NATO
baseline on defence expenditure for at least the next decade. He must also confirm that because of Russia’s
actions British troops will be stationed in Eastern Europe. And, because of the major investment underway
in the Russian Navy (with the assistance of France) Cameron must confirm that the second British
super-carrier HMS Prince of Wales will
join the fleet as planned. Then Moscow might
sit up and take notice that at least one European power is preparing to counter
the high-end military force President Putin seems determined to construct.

Something else must be
done in Wales– a new high-level dialogue with Russia must be started. The ELN report said that crisis management
lessons from the Cold War needed to be re learnt. However, the report actually missed perhaps the
Cold War’s key lesson; a constructive and essential dialogue with an aggressive
state can only be realised from a position of strength. The INF Treaty was realised in 1987 because
many political leaders had resisted popular panic to deploy nuclear forces to
Europe. At the same time they opened the
so-called “Dual-Track” negotiations with Moscow that led to the Treaty and
eventually helped end the Cold War. Dual-Track
at one and the same demonstrated a will to deter in parallel with openness to talk. It is precisely those
qualities which are needed now if the Allies are to convince President Putin
that the costs of his strategy will far outweigh any possible benefits Moscow’s
expansionist/militarist lobby are claiming for it right now.

That is how wars have
been prevented in the past and there is nothing to suggest that today’s Europe
is that much different from August 1914 Europe.
To put it another way, do Europe’s leaders have the political courage to
face an unpalatable and potentially uncomfortable strategic reality or has
political correctness so infected the chancelleries of Europe that
self-delusion is now the order of the day.
God help us all if it is the latter.

NATO needs strategy if it is to avoid sleepwalking into
another European disaster because strategy implies reasoned judgement which in
turn is the foundation of policy. The
need for judgement is above all else THE lesson from August 4, 1914.

Therefore, one hundred
years on from the outbreak of World War One the aim of NATO must not be to
fight Russia but to deter it. For
deterrence to work will, capability and above all unity of effort and purpose
of all the Allies is and will be vital.

About Me

Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute of Statecraft, Director of Europa Analytica & Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow, National Defense University, Washington DC. An internationally-recognised strategic analyst, advisor and author he was formerly Eisenhower Professor of Defence Strategy at the Netherlands Defence Academy,and Special Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leiden. He is a Fellow of Respublica in London, and a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of the Atlantic Council of the United States in Washington.
Latest books: The Oxford Handbook on War 2014 (Paperback) (2014; 709 pages). (Oxford: Oxford University Press) & "Little Britain? Twenty-First Strategy for a Middling European Power". (www.amazon.com)
The Friendly-Clinch Health Warning: The views contained herein are entirely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any institution.